Unintened
by Not Jessica
Summary: Eight months after Beth Turner's tragic death and Mick is near blinded by grief, but just as he reaches his lowest point a strange and enigmatic trio bursts in to turn not only Mick but Joseph's life upside down.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

To the untrained mortal eye Joseph Kostan and Mick St John were two overpaid, board business men, sharing a glass of premium red wine on the balcony of a high-end Los Angles penthouse, their trophy wives were talking quietly on the other end of the balcony so as not to interrupt or annoy their husbands talk of what ever game they played, accounting probably. However Joseph Kostan and Mick St John, weren't accountants, the women on the balcony weren't their wives and they certainly weren't drinking wine; they were Vampires, they were drinking blood and the women, for Joseph at least, were nothing more then Lunch.

Mick looked out on warm summer night and breathed in the air, much less polluted 43 stories up, then on the ground, were his heightened senses could pick up every foul rubbish bin and feral animal. He remembered once spending a perfect evening with Beth up here; she had eaten and then they a lain together and talked for hours, watching the stars, he remembered how he had felt absolutely content and then realised that he would never feel that way again, she had gone, in a flash of a knife she had slipped through his fingers.

His friend must have noticed his sudden change in mood, because after a moment of silence he spoke "She wouldn't have wanted you to do this, you know"

"Do what?" Mick replied, with every muscle in his body tensed as they always did now days when anyone mentioned Beth.

"Grieve for her." Joseph waited for Mick to respond, when he didn't he continued, "You know Beth would have wanted you to continue living". At this Mick gave a harsh bark of laughter, "you and I are a lot of things, Joseph, living isn't one of them."

"Even so" Joseph replied unfazed by Mick's response "My point remains, Beth was so full of vitality and it would break here heart to see you, eight months on, still wasting away on this balcony of yours thinking about what could have been". Mick didn't respond to this, mostly because he knew Joseph was right, but that didn't change the fact that he couldn't leave his memory of Beth to fade, immortality destines you to watch loved ones die and then slowly, but inevitably, fade away into the very back and uninhabited corners of the mind until you could sooner conjure up smoke then a clear image of their face, but that wouldn't happen to Beth, not if Mick could help it, even if that meant he spent the rest of his life trapped up here flicking through the old photos of Beth he had collected throughout her life.

Mick felt the pressure of Joseph's hand on his back, Joseph had changed towards Mick since the funeral, where he was usually sarcastic, obnoxious and reserved he was now concerned, comforting and almost like a father talking a son through his first break up; sharing his all too familiar experience with Sarah. Mick knew that this new Joseph took him way further out of his safe and comfortable world then his rational mind would ever allow and he appreciated it.

Again it was Joseph to break to silence. "Your not well," he said, Mick opened his mouth to argue but Joseph cut him off "quite apart from the fact you've basically cut yourself off from the world this A-positive rubbish you insist on drinking started going off when they cut your electricity," Joseph repositioned himself so he was looking directly at Mick "no matter what your morals are, when you have been drinking something like this for as long as you have the only way to counter it is with something fresh". It was the same conversation they had almost every night, Joseph would offer Mick blood from one of two gorgeous women and every night he would refuse, but just as he opened his mouth to give his customary 'no' he caught sight of his hands, they had gone past pale and were now edging closer to blue, he then remembered holding Beth with those hands, how usually so cold to the touch her skin had warmed them as he ran his hands along the curves of her body, as he had kissed her softly on the lips and then harder, more passionately and suddenly the constant thirst for fresh blood that he had forced himself to ignore for so many years became uncontrollable.

Mick looked up at Joseph and nodded, hiding his surprise Joseph clicked his fingers and two girls in expensive looking cocktail dresses walked up, as though all night they had been weighting for that very cue, Mick instantly took in there perfect posture, there superficial smiles hiding what must be fear, there almost-but-not-quite to slim build and the small but firm muscles around there arms and stomach. '_Cheerleaders or dancers'_ Mick thought (knowing Joseph it would be Cheerleaders) but most off all Mick smelt there blood; O positive, both of them, Josephs favourite. Without further ado, and for the first time in a life time Mick took the outstretched hand of the brunette, breathed in her musky perfume, kissed the beautiful tanned wrist and, thus giving himself over to the animalistic pleasure he had denied himself for so long, bit down.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dedicated to Coral Dawn Matheson (1939-2009)**

**The toughest lady in Australia**

**You are the glue the held my family together, you are my inspiration, my comforting hand and my reminder to be thankful for what I have, your loving family, your adoring friends and the countless charities that owe you the world will miss you forever. "If dad was the backbone of the family then mum was all the other bits"-The Castle.**

Chapter 2- An Uninvited Guest

Mick came to the blood with a thirst as strong as any, as he felt the almost forgotten and unfamiliarly warm taste of fresh blood trickle down his throat he quickly became frenzied sucking as much as he could from the two punctures on the girl's wrist. He felt the blood reach every part of his body that had been so long deprived of the revitalising liquid and, like an ex-addict returning to their vice, he continued to drain the girl. Joseph was too busy to notice that his friend had lost control and Mick didn't even realise that the girl's skin was almost as cold as his, beyond calling out for help she shivered and fell unconscious. Still Mick fed.

Later both Joseph and Mick shudder to think what would have happened to Mick if he had killed the girl, Joseph felt certain that he would have lost his friend forever.

Just as the girls blood loss crept towards the 40% that would kill her Joseph ripped Mick away from her. Mick, still desperate to keep feeding only had two questions; what had caused Joseph to act that way and how he had even noticed Mick, let alone attempted to stop, him when he was notoriously never interrupted when feeding. A glance at the ground answered the former of his questions and second glace toward the other end of the balcony answered the later. On the ground was the near lifeless figure of the tall and shapely brunette which Mick had been feeding on was being dragged away by her frightened friend; in seconds the image snapped Mick out of the frenzy his eyes turning back from milky white to bright blue. It was lucky that Mick had sobered up before he followed Joseph's gaze to the other end of the balcony, because what he saw would have been quite inexplicable had he not been in full control of himself.

Somehow (Joseph later told him they he jumped from a higher floor window) four dark suited Vampires and one twenty-something girl were apparently continuing a brutal fight that had been going on for quite sometime. Although she was unarmed and facing some of the meanest-looking Vampires Mick had ever seen, all armed to the teeth, the girl seemed to be holding her own superbly. As one of the Vamps, a tanned and tattooed gangster type, came at her with a swinging chain she grabbed it with surprising reflexes, nimbly flew between his legs and pulled with two arms forcing the Vamp to flip in the air and land face first into the unforgiving and unrelenting concrete, in the seconds it took the Vamp to come to she had tied him, using the chain as a kind of lasso, to a pillar, all this while dodging the failed attempts of the other Vampires to attack her. From the little Italian Mick had picked up from the war he heard the girl whispered to the confused Gangster, "you havin' fun yet?". One of the Vampires agitated punches finally made contact with the girl's sharp pale chin and she was propelled to the edge of the balcony. For a second the girl was motionless.

Mick glanced to Joseph, clearly suffering under the same predicament, the girl was outnumbered, and their first instinct was to help her, but as they had no idea about any of the concerned parties their loyalty should naturally lie with the Vampires.

The three remaining fighters had descended on the girl who was half leaning of the balcony when she rose, face splattered with blood and a wild grin on her face, she looked directly at the Vamp who had drawn the offending punch and Joseph heard her, now speaking in Russian, presumably her attackers native language, "you shouldn't have done that" and ran into them with a speed unsurpassed by any human Mick had ever seen, she quickly disarmed the shorter of the three who was wielding a switchblade knife. In a matter of moments the girl had two of the Vamps as trapped and helpless as the Italian and was holding the toughest and what appeared to be the leader across the edge of the 43rd story apartment speaking this time in a smooth, cool and unmistakably Australian accent "Now I want to be sure I never hear of you attacking kids _ever_ again" the Vamp laughed replying in a cold New-York dialect,

"Stupid girl, a fall would never kill me and some two bit homeless bitch and her pansy brother would never stop me chasing the finest of all blood vintages for my clients." This seemed a bad move as the girls eyes flashed dangerously, Mick wasn't sure if she had been bluffing at first, but if she had the slight on her brother turned her threat very real.

"Oh no, this wont kill you" she said sweetly leaning in closer and whispering "but it'll hurt like hell" and with that she pushed him over the edge calling "consider this a warning" behind him. She then untied the men and said in the coldest most dangerous voice Mick had ever heard "if you don't fancy me helping you take the fast route down then get gone." Never had the three men moved faster. Later that night they would recount that story to their girlfriends, and then they would head back, one to Italy, one to Russia and one to California, and like so many of the people the girl gave warnings to, they would live of blood bank supplies for the rest of their days.

Looking out onto the busy Los Angles night life the girl pulled out a small mirror and began dabbing the blood away from her face. After about five minutes she froze, evidently remembering this was not her balcony and she was not alone. She turned on her heels to discover Mick and Joseph staring at her, dumbstruck. She obviously realised that her actions probably did warrant some explanation "He err…" she mumbled unnecessarily pointing downwards to show she was referring to the man she had just pushed off a building "He deals in kids with rare blood types, we think he was the top of the food chain in the Bulgarian branch of the organisation, and he just killed the Vamp at the top of the American one so we think that he was next in charge here, were hoping that without the figurehead the whole thing will go haywire long enough to take out the balls of the system". Mick and Joseph were still stunned but slowly recovering, possibly to give him more time then anything else Joseph croaked

"We?" as if he knew he could only handle one of this girl at the moment and had no interest in more of her.

"Ah yeah" she replied, clearly still wondering how to explain her actions to her hosts "Me, my brother Artie and his boyfriend Tim, were kinda' just travelling round when we found got an unwelcome insight into this whole network". Something as normal as talk of a brother seemed to fully ground Mick and Joseph and it was Joseph again who had the insight to ask

"And you are?" The girl seemed shocked

"I'm so sorry here I am rabbiting on about god knows what and kicking the shit out of gangsters on your bloody balcony and I haven't even told you who I am, Aggie London is the name, and look," she added in a sudden drop in the confidence that had been building "I don't mean to be rude but I couldn't bother you for a cuppa tea by any chance, could I? I wouldn't usually ask but I've been non stop chasing those guys all night and for those not used to your nocturnal lifestyle it can really take it out of you." During this strange introduction Joseph had been slowly regaining his business like self.

"My name's Joseph Kostan and this is my close friend Mick St John, as you probably know neither of us drink tea but I'm sure Mick might be able to find a teabag lying around." With a smile Mick opened the door and gestured that they should all head to the kitchen. A look from Joseph told Mick that, far from trusting her he planned to find out all he could about this mysterious stranger, Aggie London.


	3. Chapter 3

**Dedicated to Coral Dawn Matheson (1939-2009)**

**The toughest lady in Australia**

**You are the glue the held my family together, you are my inspiration, my comforting hand and my reminder to be thankful for what I have, your loving family, your adoring friends and the countless charities that owe you the world will miss you forever. "If dad was the backbone of the family then mum was all the other bits"-The Castle.**

Chapter 3

It was only after Mick had closed the door of his apartment that he noticed how strikingly beautiful Aggie London was. She had bright and curly auburn hair that reached down to her waist and framed her pale, heart shape face. She had features like broken glass, Mick thought, her sharp chin, refined nose and smooth cherry lips cutting a stunning profile. However what most captivated Mick were her eyes, they were the sort of eyes that drew you in and let you lose yourself in their endless abyss, there seemed to be a light dancing just behind them igniting bright, electric green hues of an intensity that Mick had never seen on anyone before. He took in what Aggie was wearing; a pair of worn skinny-leg jeans, battered high-top shoes and an even older t-shirt emblazoned with the words '_Brutal Youth, Elvis Costello_" across the chest. Mick thought the simplicity of the clothing merely added to her natural beauty but reflecting on what the unfortunate Vamp had said before he had made the slight on her brother he wondered weather the was simply the most she could afford.

However taken Mick had been by Aggie it was nothing to how Joseph was looking, with zero of his Vampire cool he was stumbling over his own tongue and franticly looking for a teabag in the refrigerator while Aggie sat there making awkward conversation, clearly wondering weather to point out a more strategic place for Joseph to look in his search for the elusive teabag. Mick quickly came to his rescue, directing him to a small cupboard where he kept a modest supply of food and refreshments for the small minority of the houseguests he received that were human.

Mick began to make Aggies tea while Joseph collected his thoughts and finally managed to return to his regular self.

"So…" he began, fishing for a subject "What brings you to Mick's balcony this evening?" Mick could almost hear him mentally kicking himself, not at all up to Joseph's usual standard of conversation,

"Well like said out there I've been chasing that guy for a while, if your wondering what brought me to Mick's balcony specifically I was fighting with Artie and Tim on the floor above you, they went through the window and I followed them down"

"Artie and Tim?" Joseph probed

"Did I mention them before?" it wasn't a hint that she was repeating herself, it was a genuine question, "Hmmm, perhaps, not Artie is my brother and Tim is his boyfriend, I was pinned to the wall upstairs and when Tim came to help me he hadn't quite dropped the guy he was on, the bastard came up from behind and knocked him out, when they went out the window Artie stayed with Tim till he came to and then…" she trailed off looking suddenly horror struck and as nervous as before "They were going to follow me down, they should be here any second, shit, I'm so sorry, I really should go I've already monumentally imposed on your Hospitality, what with the gangsters and the tea and everything" It struck Mick as strange that this girl placed throwing bloodsucking gangsters of building at about the same level of rude guest behaviour as asking for a cup of tea, but he didn't challenge the term. "And now I've got people joining me, I just can't believe it. I'm so sorry, I swear as soon as they show their faces I'll be out of your hands forever, I'm so so sorry"

Joseph's look of relief that Artie and Tim were relations and not competition was whipped of his face at the prospect of Aggie leaving, but he clearly had lost the capacity to speak calmly to this girl and Mick saw that it was his turn to intervene,

"Miss London, I wouldn't dream of letting you leave" Aggie opened her mouth to protest but Mick cut her off "Seriously, Miss London, as far as I can tell you've had a bugger of a night and I would be honoured if all three of you would stay for a few drinks".

Aggie looked uncertain, almost as if she wasn't used to any sort of hospitality and was unsure, just, Mick guiltily reminded himself they had been before they had properly seen her, whether to trust them, however she agreed to the drinks and was just about to answer Joseph's completely corny, faintly desperate question on "whether there was a Mr. London?" when two tall, strapping young men landed on the balcony.

Aggie's good looks were clearly genetic, as she went out to meet Artie and Tim, judging by their frequent backwards looks she was explaining the situation and they were all making a very quick judgment call on Mick's seemingly over-friendly request, meanwhile both Mick and Joseph noted that they easily matched Aggie's natural charm; he assumed by the matching auburn hair that the taller of the two was Artie, he was wearing rough dark blue jeans, a dirty ancient leather jacket and a black t-shirt, loose fitting but just tight enough for Mick to notice a perfect set of abs, his hair was short and stuck up all over the place, his skin and eyes were the same colour as his sister and one of his long and muscular arms was draped lazily around the waist of the second man, Tim. Although he was clearly dazed from the knock to the head Aggie had mentioned it was still impossible not to notice that he the same effortless good looks as the brother and sister, unlike Artie he was slender, he wore blue skinny leg jeans and a T-shirt reading; "_The Smiths, The Queen is Dead_". He had a shock of black hair that was cut messily just above his eyes, which were a beautiful pale grey, the only thing that disfigured his otherwise perfect face was a horrific burn mark that creped along his left jaw line and almost the entire left side of his neck.

Mick was about to wonder aloud as to the origin of such a painful looking burn when the three of them came back inside. Mick hurriedly made his and Joseph's introductions and the two men reciprocated. Joseph lead everyone two the table offering the humans Mick's one solitary bottle of wine as well as taking Micks A+ for a refill. When he returned Tim made the same apologies as Aggie had done earlier, it was clear to Mick that these were people who were not used not imposing on hospitality. Once the apologies had been made the conversation flowed easily, feeling that he should fufill the original task he and Joesph had agreed on before discovering Aggies good looks, Mick resolved to find as much as he could about the three of them; Aggie was a musician working at the Amphitheatre, a small café in Down Town Los Angeles, both Tim and Artie are also musicians how ever they were both currently doing freelance work making and repairing guitars the talk of music, as Aggie later reflected so commonly happens, sufficiently broke the ice and the group were talking well into the next morning without realising it. It was Mick who eventually brought up the subject, so easily forgotten, of the fight on the balcony, "So who was that guy" he said gesturing to the balcony. After a second of silence it was Tim, who spoke,

"That was Silas Smith, Aggie mentioned his links with The Organisation, I assume"

"Yeh of course" Mick said hurriedly, not overly keen to hear any more of the sickening international Organisation "What I really meant was that, well, there are not a lot of humans who are aware of, well, us I was just wondering well…" here Aggie took over, "Me and Artie are actually triplets, our brother Charlie was tortured and killed by The Organisation" a stony silence preceded Aggie's cold words, Tim was holding Arties hand which had gone very pale and the playful light that flickered behind Aggie's eyes seemed to have temporarily gone out.

"I'm so sorry," Joseph said, "did they catch the guy who did it?"

"At the time," Artie continued for his sister "We were living in a small town in the Tadla-Azilal province of Morocco, we hadn't renewed our visa's for many years and we couldn't afford to be locked in a jail cell, we all decided that we would find Charlie's killer ourselves, rather then finding ourselves behind bars before the murderer himself."

"And did you find him?" Joseph prompted.

"It was the Organisation that killed him," said Artie, hand now shaking, "the man who did it was nothing more then torturer and executioner" after a pause he added, but yes, we found him". For the first time since they had come in from the balcony Mick and Joseph saw three, cold warriors, hardened by pain and loss and driven by a thirst as strong as the Bloodlust of any Vampire for revenge, it was there that Mick made a reckless and impulsive snap decision; "You said you were looking to bring down the Organisation here in LA, me and Joseph both have contacts, we know some people who know some people, let us help"

The trio on the other side of the table conversed in a few, silent glances. Aggie looked Mick and Joseph straight in the eyes and said two words; "You're, in".


	4. Chapter 4

**Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. **

**Oscar Wilde, **_**De Profundis**_

**Chapter 4**

It was two weeks since Aggie London had let Mick and Joseph in on the seemingly endless Crusade to bring down the Organisation. The two Vampires had spent those weeks pulling every contact and searching under every stone to find any trace of the Organisation. Aggie, Tim and Artie did not seem surprised when they came back to say that they had found nothing,

"It took us a year to find a decent contact", Tim explained from Josef's expensive Sofa, like always Tim had a cool, calm and elegant look that the twins, with there excitable demeanours and bright electric personalities could never quite manage, he was leaning back into the Sofa, legs crossed, one hand holding a beer and the other, lazily wrapped around Artie's muscular shoulders, his lips were creased into a wide grin, amused at Mick and Josef's unexpected failure, "The Organisation has a full-proof security system, you would be mad to inform on them, besides if _you_ had a taste for Kids Blood, would you admit it?"

They were enjoying a drink in Josef's living room, which had become somewhat of a head quarters for he and Mick in the past fortnight, however it was the first time that the other three had ever seen the apartment, it was clear to Joseph that its extravagance astounded them and he couldn't help feeling a little guilty.

"So, how did you find a contact then?" Josef asked, clearly not used to being in any way inferior, especially in Vampire Knowledge.

"We found a mad person" Everyone looked up as Aggie walked into the room. She stepped further in the living room; into a beam of sunlight created by the huge windows. The dust in the air sparkled in the light, slightly obscuring those sharp features, and in a second Mick no longer saw Aggie London, but Beth. He saw her standing there, he saw her determined face and wide intriguing eyes, and then he saw her gasp in pain as a second person materialised behind her, whispering an unknown secret in her ear and slashing her soft beautiful neck. The moment was over in seconds, know one commented Mick's small flight from reality, so often he had these flashbacks of that night that he rarely betrayed any emotion, but was it his imagination or was there a flicker of understanding in Aggie's eyes as she walked past him, sitting next her brother.

"Don't you have a job to go to?" Artie playfully enquired as Tim absentmindedly brushed a lock of his Auburn hair from over his face, Aggie answered that she wasn't on for another hour and she had no intension of letting the manager, Jim Carly stare at her chest for any longer then necessary. Josef was intrigued, "what do you mean, you found a mad person?"

"Well,", Artie explained "a while back a batch of blood got contaminated, lets just say that we found one of the buyers, and that when his not hallucinating and talking to himself he is very bitter".

"So, where do we go from here?" Joseph asked as he got up and went to the window of his apartment, he was joined by his four guests, and for a while none of them spoke as they watched the stylish metropolis bustle beneath them, millions of ordinary people, unaware of the countless dark secrets that floated around them.

"The Organisation's secrecy is its blessing but, to use the cliché, it's also its curse, nobody knows more then they need to know, and nobody is allowed to ask to know more, that means its going to take someone to be in enough trouble to break that rule to realise that both the Head and the VP of the American Branch is dead. Until that happens the Organisation is running at almost full strength, it pains me to say this but, until we get the call from another of our informants, we wait" As Aggie said all this the mask she wore had temporarily slipped, she wasn't talking as a bright and confident twenty-something, but as a calculating Army General, preparing to head into one of the many battles that she had already seen to much of. The look woke Mick up, he was in his 80's, Joseph in his 400's and they were both immortal, to them this fight would become little more then a moment in a decade past, hundreds of years from now, but these three were just kids, with slashable skin and breakable bones. They were sacrificing everything so that the world could be a safer place for people more fortunate then themselves. At that moment, and forever after that, Mick had nothing for respect for the three.

"I better go," said Aggie as she walked to the door, pulling her hair up into a rough bun as she did so "I'm on in half an hour, wanna come?"

One look at Josef's ecstatic face answered her question, it would be Josef's first opportunity to find out some more about the life of the enigma that is Aggie London. The old friends shared a look, and Josef, with as much cool as he could muster replied, "let me get my coat".


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_In this town we all bear our own load  
'cause we know what's waiting at the end of the road  
you've left me here you've left me alone  
in lonely city, in this lonely city_

It was Joseph and Mick's first time at the Amphitheatre. It was an underground bar. The lights were scarce and dim, most of the people were in large groups, and everyone seemed to know each other, however there were a few sitting alone reading or drawing. Joseph watched as beautiful young humans let the music flow through them as they held there partners against their slim bodies, swaying in perfect time to the music, there was not a mobile phone in sight, only friends sharing their moments and living their moments. Mick could not have felt more out of place in his full suit, straight from work, whereas Joseph couldn't have looked more at home, he was in a partly unbuttoned silk blue shirt and lazily talking with Tim and Artie, this Bohemian lifestyle suited the ancient Vampire as well as it seemed to suit Aggie, who was on stage and Tim and Artie, who were clearly regulars at the bar. In fact, Mick mused, it was the first time he had seen any of them fully relaxed; the ever faithful social lubricant, alcohol plus their obvious love of music, in a place where any social conventions would seem laughable seemed to get the usually reserved three to let others in to their private world, at least for a while.

"Aggie always starts the night with covers" said Artie, leaning over the table to be better heard over the music, "She doesn't like doing other peoples songs but Jim, the manager insists that while it's busy she brings out something familiar, his idea of a strategy, it boggles my mind that someone like that owns a place like this, it was his brothers business and he hasn't changed a thing since he took over so I guess its running on old steam. Still at least with this song I get her to try out my latest violin"

Almost as if on cue Aggie began her solo, it clear that both she and her brother were extremely talented. The violin Artie had created sounded like honey in Aggie's hands, sliding from one note to the next with flawless precision and grace, the sound was fluid and full and during the solo the bar fell silent, taken in by the spell that the music had spun. Everyone watched as the artist perfected her work and cheered, although wishing the sound would carry evermore, when she had finished her masterpiece and began singing once again, that angelic voice almost compensating for her violin finishing its beautiful work.

The song was concluded by the words "That was _Paradise City_ by The Audreys, I'm taking a short break, I'll be back soon, my name is Meg Gardener and I hope your enjoying yourselves" the words hardly covered the beauty that Aggie had just snatched out of thin air and Joseph realised he had been unnecessarily holding his breath for the duration of the song, he then unnecessarily exhaled as Aggie came and joined them at their table.

"Meg Gardener?" said Josef, eyebrows raised.

"Well I could of gone with 'Aggie London is here, would you like me to stand still while you shoot me?' but it wouldn't fit on the Amphitheatre brochure."

"Alright, Alright" Josef said as he handed her a beer "You know traditionally I'm supposed to be the sarcastic one"

When she came back on, one hour later the crowd had died down considerably and she started singing some of her own songs. She was singing a smooth lounge piece in Spanish, Josef had never taken the time to learn Spanish but he now wished he had as he watched her throwing her heart into the song, she shut her eyes as she sang, one hand clasped around a microphone the other seemed to be moving with the music, her fingers tracing invisible, elegant coil in the air; lifting just above her head on the higher notes and spiralling downwards when she hit those smooth, deep bass notes.

He shook his head a little, snapping himself out of a trance before the others cloud notice his infatuation, instead he focused his attentions to the conversation at hand.

"So how long have you two been together?" Mick asked as Tim and Artie concluded their spirited argument about the lead up to the Ashes test and wether Ponting is on form with a few playful punches that Mick had a feeling would have been hard enough to make most humans wince.

Tim was surprised by the question, and he could tell Artie was too. They were so rarely in new company that anyone prying took them aback. Neither of them really knew how much they wanted to share with Mick and Josef, or anyone for that matter, and Tim decided to answer safely.

"I've known Artie and Aggie since my first day of Primary School. We were all born in Minyirr, that's a small town just outside of Broome, in north Western Australia; there isn't a school there so we took the bus into Broome together everyday. It was Year 7 when we started going out, as much as you can have a relationship when your twelve years old." At this everyone except Josef laughed, he was the only one who couldn't recall falling in and out of love at the drop of hat and the thrill of holding hands in the school corridors that can only really be captured by twelve year olds.

"So when did you guys leave Minyirr?" pried Mick. The two men exchanged looks, over the last two weeks Mick and Josef had filled a space that had been hanging for a long time, they had been good friends, and honest with them about anything they had asked, how much did they want to share? Josef noticed that at Mick's question Tim had unconsciously ran a finger along the burn on his neck.

There was a silence only broken by Aggie's singing.

It was Artie who spoke. "We left Minyirr when we were Fourteen," in answer to Mick and Josef's startled faces he added "with… with families like ours… you… you grow up fast." It was clear the conversation was over.

Talk of pasts had long faded into the haze of marijuana and alcohol, it was five in the mourning and the group had only parted ways an hour ago when Josef got a knock on the door. It was Tim.

"Well, this is a surprise. Why don't you come in"

"Artie and I were talking it over, and we reckon that in the next few months there is a strong possibility we will be trusting each other with our lives. We reckon you and Mick deserves to know everything, so, I guess I'll begin at the beginning."

In seconds Tim began divulging a history he had never believed he could share with anyone.


	6. Chapter 6

"_All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."_

_Galileo Galilei_

**Chapter 6**

Tim looked out the large windows of the luxurious high end apartment and stared at the moon. He had always been fascinated by the moon, it was the inspiration of so much pain and so much beauty, lovers met under, it lunatics howled at it and poets dreamed of it but somehow no one had ever quite managed to truly capture the mysterious intangible feeling the moon inspired, that comfort in her inevitability and uneasiness in her unstoppable periodic wanning. The moon was our key to the universe beyond our world and a reminder that there is always more.

When they had left Minyirr there had been a silent agreement to leave everything behind them, the moon was the only happy memories from Tim's childhood the only reminder of a past he wanted to forget forever but in a strange way a source of safety, ironically enough a way to keep him grounded and sane.

He had resolved to tell Joseph everything but now the time had come he didn't know if he even could, there were so many cobwebs that had grown over memories he had never cared to dwell on, and so much pain. Tim didn't even know where to start, as little as he wanted to tell his story he had an undefinable sense that it was vital for Joseph and Mick, not just to know but to _understand_ them and the idea of failing to do this terrified him beyond belief. All he could do, he decided, was start at the beginning.

'Artie's mum left when he was two and his dad was an alcoholic. A mean drunk. He, Aggie and Charlie used to come to school with great big gashes on their faces where he had hit them with bottles and more than once they had all slept outside because he kicked them out of the house. My dad, well my dad was the polar opposite, he was the local priest, he was one of the few remaining literalists and he was everything that's wrong about religion, he chose to completely ignore all the best things about Christianity and foster hate and mistrust amongst all his parishioners. My mother was broken so long ago, she hardly spoke, I can't even remember what her voice sounded like and I followed her lead, I was to be seen not heard, but at the end of the day as long as the world didn't know they didn't care what I did; as long as Maureen from number 12 didn't see me out at night I could be out till dawn, and I often was.' Tim tried to arrange his thoughts; there was no right way to say it,

'You remember us telling you about how we met?' Joseph seemed surprised he had started talking but was instantly tense, aware and serious,

'You met at a bus stop on a rainy day, right?'

'Right, now even at twelve years old we knew Minyirr wouldn't take kindly to me and Artie and parents even less so, so we didn't tell anyone. For almost two years we kept seeing each other in secret. We were just kids and even though we had had to grow up fast we still embraced this secret world; we felt like spies on covert-ops, at school we had to go undercover, pretending to be something we weren't but the moment we were alone we could shed the mask and be ourselves' Tim said all this very quickly Joseph could sense he was divulging secrets known only ever to him Artie, Aggie and Charlie.

'This game work well for a long time, but by the time we were fourteen we started to ask ourselves 'why?' and one night we decided to tell everyone.'

There was another long pause, but it was a different kind of silence; tension had been replaced with sadness, suddenly Joseph had an almost overwhelming sense that he didn't want to know what happened next. Tim unconsciously ran his index finger across his scarred, disfigured cheekbone.

'Sometimes,' he began 'sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had both had the guts to tell our parents to their faces but, well, we decided the best way would be to go to the annual beach party, an event held every year with a large bonfire, the whole town and cheap and nasty booze. The parishioners lured my father to watch over in disapproval and the cheap booze lured Artie's. Everyone from school where there as well. It seemed like a really simple fail-safe plan just start holding hands, act like a couple and it'll be like nothing changed. Our biggest problem was that we couldn't understand why what we were doing was wrong so we couldn't see that our plan was destined to fail.' There was another pause. 'There was ten minutes where no one said anything, ten perfect minutes, I let myself think this was what it would be like forever, we were just sitting on the sand and talking, it's the only time I can ever think of where I was 100% purely content and it felt... beautiful.

Then Davie Stewart came up to us, he was one of twenty other people in our year at school, I remember, clear as day, he had this kind of confused look, Artie and I had played our parts well, right up to Playboy girls on the inside of the locker, for a while he didn't say anything accept 'hey', we'd never been what you'd call friends but we were close enough to support a passing friendly conversation were we to meet outside of school. Not today. The silence just droned on as he kind of looked us up and down and finely he just goes 'are you guys faggots?' to be honest, we should have, but we hadn't entirely prepared ourselves for the question, we couldn't think of anything better to say then 'yes''.

At this Tim seemed to lose even more of the little self control that remained to him. He shut his eyes and he could see imprints of that night scarred on the back of his eyelids, so clear he started to rub them furiously in hoped of escape, to no avail. Tim shivered as he felt an icy pressure down his spine, it was a second before he realised that Joseph had silently mover to his side and was placing an uncharacteristically comforting hand on his back. It was this small act of kindness and support that helped Tim go on where a second ago he thought it had been impossible.

'So Davie calls to his friends,

'Oi, you lot Artie London and Timmy Richards are fucking poofters!' and the whole town goes silent, everyone is looking at us, they don't know what to do, just up the back I can see my father but I can't see his expression, we stand up but we are still totally dwarfed by people we used to count as peers, now towering over us and before I even know what's happening there hitting us and hitting us and they just keep going I could hear my ribs cracking and I'm lying in the blood I'm coughing up and next to me I see that Artie's unconscious and Charlie and Aggie are trying and failing to hold them back some people are screaming and some people are cheering I look up and I realise that Artie's dad is kicking his own unconscious son, laughing like a maniac. As the people attacking us start to tire the people trying to stop them are more successful, I can't get up but next to me I can hear Artie beginning to wake. My vision is blurry and I can hardly breathe but I can just make out my father looking down at me, someone says something to him, I don't know what and he turns me from my side onto my back with my foot and says,

'He is not my son'. That was the last time I ever saw my father. His words brought on this new kind of frenzy amongst the gang, just directed at me this time, I hardly even noticed that they were dragging me by the ankles, somewhere, I couldn't move, I hardly flinched as I felt my ankle pulled out of its socket but as I started to feel the heat from the bonfire on my skin I realised what was going on, they threw me straight into the flames.'

At these words flashbacks of that night flooded back to Tim with startling clarity, details he had forgotten came back to him, sharp as day. He knew he had to finish the story, not for Josephs sake, Joseph had heard all he needed to know but he had some idea that he needed to vocalise it, come to terms with it, renounce his past and truly move on as opposed to this kind of half life all three of them had been living for over a decade.

'That was the single most excruciating thing I have ever felt, I can't describe to you the feeling, the smell of your own burning flesh, the sound of your own voice screaming, I knew some people were screaming with me, it wasn't the whole town who wished me dead, but all I could hear was laughing, my father's laughter. I don't know how long I was in there, and I have no idea how Artie had the strength to pull me out but he, Aggie and Charlie managed to get me to the water, the salt water was almost as painful as the flames but I'm sure it saved my life from infection.'

At this Tim paused, he seemed to be weighing up his options. After a moment he slowly took off his shirt. Joseph couldn't help but take in a sharp gasp of unnecessary breath of horror; the scar that covered half his neck and licked his cheekbone covered almost his entire torso. Neither man made any comment, although they seemed to be communicating on some kind of subconscious level. Tim continued,

'I don't remember anything after that, Aggie and Charlie carried us to safety, we crossed the W. A. Border that night and we got help at the flying doctor service HQ. Once we healed up we stowed away on a cargo ship to PNG, and spent a few months island hoping around Micronesia, stealing what we needed. Eventually started heading west, walking pretty much the whole way, until we got to Morocco'

For the first time since Tim started talking he and Joseph made eye contact, from that moment on they were best friends, somehow neither needed to say anything, after a few minutes Tim rose to go home knowing his job was done.

Joseph understood and that meant everything.

Half a foot was out the door when Joseph's phone broke the prolonged silence. After a second Joseph handed it to Tim,

'It's for you' he said Tim curiously raised the phone to his ear he heard Artie's crackled voice coming from the other end of L. A.

'Our informants ready to talk, you and Joseph need to get over here...It's starting'.

**Please read and review! I don't care if all you say in your review is how much you hated it I still love knowing my work has been read!**


	7. Chapter 7 Cellar Door

_What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."- T. S. Eliot_

Chapter 7- Cellar Door.

The room was dank and cold despite the hot evening in the City of Angels. Mick could see the sun rising from a small crack in the boarded up window at the top of the wall, cobwebs hung from the grey, miserable corners. There was a peeling Sports Illustrated calendar pinned to the wall dated back decades and a moth eaten punching bag swinging slightly from its rusted hook that was older then Mick. Aggie took a swig of Bourbon straight from a clear bottle before turning to the sole chair in the decrepit room. The chair's inhabitant was a grubby, ink stained vampire with blood shot eyes, Mick supposed that under regular circumstances the man would have seemed large and intimidating but something about the way Aggie looked at him made him seem very small indeed. For a whole ten minutes nobody spoke, Aggie was glaring intently at the nervous looking man and Artie was noiselessly doing everything he could to lighten the icy tension, and failing; his manic looking smile served only to add to the informants marked discomfort concerning the whole situation. The silence was only broken by Aggie massaging her hands and cracking her knuckles, never breaking her focus toward the man with the bloodshot eyes. Mick couldn't help but wonder why this vampire would come back to help the twins, it was clear it was all Aggie could do not to hit him into oblivion and on closer inspection he realised Artie was not making much better of the situation. Mick knew for a fact that Aggie was heavily armed; he had seen her pocket a switchblade knife and strap two small daggers to her ankles before they arrived and the bulge in the back of her jeans was clearly a small but undeniably lethal gun, if Mick had been the vampire in the chair right now he would have been seriously contemplating the possibility of his life being brought to a very abrupt halt in the very near future.

Suddenly a sound brought all four of them back to reality; the crunching of tyres on gravel was followed by the slamming of car doors, then footsteps down to the room. The initial sound brought the twins to a complete stop. They sat bolt upright and grabbed hold of their weapons under their clothes. There was a scratching of a key entering a lock and early morning sunlight bathed the room as the door opened a small way for a little more than a second. Through the door came the serious yet ever comforting face of Tim. He walked quickly into the room followed by Joseph, both mimicking the silence of their company. Tim's eyes flashed around the room assessing the situation; it was another long minute before the three exchanged some quick words in what Mick vaguely recognised as Eastern European. The conversation was clearly in regards to the informant, from the little Romany Joseph knew he could make an educated guess as to the premise of the conversation. Tim was reminding the twins that they were supposed to be treating their informant as a guest not a prisoner, it seemed that, although none of them liked it, each party knew that Tim was right. As Aggie went off to the corner away from the group where the Bourbon currently resided Tim and Artie quickly embraced each other, Tim whispering something in his boyfriend's ear, too quietly for Joseph's rusty Romany to pick up, however he felt sure he had been reassuring Artie that he, Joseph now knew everything.

Everyone except Tim and the vampire in the chair had instinctively let the shadows engulf them. Tim was looking thoughtfully into the eyes of the vampire; he somehow seemed to be both miles away and the only steady thing in the storm ragging unseen in the room at the same time. The sound of match on flint as Aggie lit up a cigarette with shaking hands seemed to break Tim from his reverie. He took two steps over to Aggie taking both her bourbon and her recently christened cigarette, Mick couldn't help better wonder whether this had been a strictly wise move; her alcohol and nicotine seemed to be the only thing anchoring her panic, but somehow she managed to silently let Tim prise the bottle from her hands, once again Mick got a flash not of a fearless warrior but of a scared young woman, lost and confused by a world that had turned its back on her.

Tim gave the Bourbon and the smoke to the Vampire and he took them thankfully. Tim had taken another step back, not breaking eye contact when he said with a smile just a bit too kind to be real and not quite reaching as far as his voice, which still had an undeniable threatening tone;

'Hello Eddy.' The vampire looked into Tim's eyes with a new intensity. The interview had begun.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

'Firstly,' said sacarine-sweet Tim, 'Thank you, we understand the, ah, risks you have taken on in stepping forward as you have- but you are secure, I'm sure, in the knowledge, that this could be your first step on the path towards redemption'. The Vampire responded only with a look, Aggie later told Josef she called it 'The Customer is Always Right Look', that combination of bone-crushing hate and mandatory respect, later, Josef would see the merit in christening the look with a title; it was something of a common denominator in all of the three's interactions with vampires. It wasn't long before Mick understood why Tim had assumed control of the interview; the headstrong twins would have bullied all of the information the Vampire thought he knew out of him and moved on to the next target, Tim's 'good-cop' approach, however, was one of the most masterful Mick had ever seen. Most people register around 80% more then the conscious side of their brain realizes- until pressed, when one takes into account heightened Vampire senses there is a lot of good information hiding away in that subconscious. As Tim poked and prodded, the vampire's junkie mind started recalling facts he hadn't even realised he knew; most of it was pretty standard stuff, the smell of his dealers hands (gloss paper and ink), his accent and the bags under his eyes, at exactly what intensity the bright sun had been burning his skin, a song playing in a shop across the street (Rick Astley), Mick and Josef watched with the passive engagement of an amateur observing a master, knowing the picture this Vampire was painting in Tim's mind was invaluable- but having no clue how.

It was hours before the interview was over, Mick saw day breaking through the crack in the cellar door. Tim gave Artie a nod, the cue Artie had been waiting for to unceremoniously throw the sweaty Vampire out. 'Aren't you worried?' Josef asked the room at large, 'I mean, he's seen our faces, he could come, back...for, you know... dinner...'Aggie laughed cynically;

'The Organisation will have him killed by tomorrow morning. They may be slow when it comes to the higher ranks but they are smart enough to know that the junkies at the bottom of the food chain are their loosest ends, they keep an eye on them- nobody ever knows they a being watched by The Organisation, but if you are, it probably means you are going to die- sooner or later...for Chuck, its going to be sooner'. Mick was used to humans diminishing the importance of a vampire's death, mourning the dead undead never really fit into that rational human view, but something about the way Aggie seemed to dismiss Chuck's sacrifice struck false to Mick. The guy was no better than a child-murderer, but Mick saw, in that very moment, what it was about Aggie that he had struggled to define, that elusive quality which was so fundamentally her, and, what he expected, had so drawn Josef to her. More then anyone he had ever known, Aggie had respect for life, she cherished and adored it, held it in so high an esteem that she could never fail to mourn a loss of it, no matter how poorly spent. Mick thought, in that moment, how cruel it was that a woman with such a heightened respect for life had been forced to take so many.

'Got em!' called Artie, Mick and Josef hadn't even noticed him in the corner, behind a small, battered, bright pink laptop,

'Ah, nice tech' Josef quipped, Tim and Aggie shared a look, which said 'we tried to tell him',

'Shut up Tim,' Artie snapped,

'I didn't say anything', said Tim, eyes filled with mock-hurt,

'You were thinking too loudly, if she liked her precious computer so much she shouldn't have left it lying around- and she certainly shouldn't have laughed at you,'

'She was eight! And I'm pretty sure 'zipped securely in her backpack' doesn't count as lying around'

'Whatever, can we all get over my pretty pink computer, which is one more computer then either of you deros have, by the way, and have a look at what I've found'.

Mick had been impressed by Tim's interview skills- but he could see now that he had still underestimated him. Every little thing Chuck had said had helped, his drug addled rememberings had helped Artie to track his dealer into the tightest of circle of operation, until they had a name.

Mick had long stopped being surprised by the knowledge and skills of the three humans, but somehow, until this moment he had underestimated their experience. This was not their first interview; each had instantly made the connection between a tired vampire, and frequent electricity blackouts- just about the only thing that could keep a vampire from getting a good sleep is their freezer suddenly switching off mid-slumber. Then there was the ink smell, a printing press. So a printing press, in the West Hollywood area which was being plagued by power outages- this was America, there would be a complaint, and a local newspaper article. Sure enough a well placed search found a small one column article in the back of the local rag about a local magazine printing press's battle with the electricty company, something about blackouts localised to one small block, the owners of the press assumed it was the doing of a rival press, the company in the cellar guessed it had more to do with an industrial freezer running full-bore, 24-7 somewhere else on the block. A quick look at google earth and Artie picked the house on the block inhabited by the Vampire, south-facing (avoiding sunset and sunrise), tinted windows, and a chimney; even the most practical of vampires are still 'wrinkly old people, bitching about the old days' at heart, and for the six trained eyes staring at the cracked computer screen, the vampire may as well have had a neon sign declaring his presence than installing a chimney in this area of West Hollywood. Josef exhaled loudly, as a copy of a drivers license popped up on the screen, he would be lying if he didn't admit to himself he was alarmed that the less then honourable actions of vampires could be held to account by three enterprising humans on an eight year old's laptop. Artie looked around, his triumphantly determined grin infecting the four around him; 'get your diaries out people, when do you suppose we should be paying', a cursory glance at the screen, ' Ronald Myers a visit?'


End file.
